Facebook Portal App Reviews

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Stopped casting photos to portal. We love the portal for regular visits with elderly parent in a residential facility. Favorite part is casting photos to the screen during the calls. Suddenly the app has stopped casting function. Message suggests that app needs to be updated but no update is feasible on the app. 🤨

Something is wrong. The ONLY thing I can do on the Facebook Portal App is add pictures … there are NO other options … and when I added the pictures, they didn’t show … so I signed out & restarted … I can’t get back in … it wants me to choose my contacts AGAIN … but the only 2 people I need to add, aren’t in my list anymore … EVERYTHING is screwed up now … since I installed the app‼️

Very bad photos screen saver. I set my photos to cycle through display as screen saver when not in use. I have already been 50 images but only cycles through one picture or a few pictures. Some problem. It is disappointing that a simple screen saver cannot be implemented by mighty meta/FB

Pictures. The pictures are great, but I cannot seem to figure out what else it does. If no other people I know has one, there’s not much to do with it.

Family. Love the fact I can share with my family, no matter where I am

Unable to Upload Photos. This app used to be great, enabling me to upload pictures directly from my Shared Library photos. However now with this latest update I’m unable to upload photos directly from my iPhone’s Photo app. Now I have to sign onto Portal and manually select photos I’ve saved directly on my iPhone (instead of Shared Library). Can this bug be fixed??

Calling Portal from iPhone Portal App Doesn’t Work. Despite the app description, the only thing the app will let you do is load photos to the Portal device. There is no functionality to call the Portal device from your phone or perform a drop-in. This significantly limits the usefulness of the device.

Photo Rotation. For a year only my 50 most recent photos have been rotated on my display, disappointing. The point is to take the place of a wall of pictures. Just this week it started bringing back memories and older photos. If this continues I will revisit my review. Was something changed by the development team?

Remote issues. The app remote is really inconsistent. It works occasionally but most of the time it’s “something went wrong - check your network connection”. I’ve done everything to troubleshoot it.

App working very well. Thanks for letting me add photos for my grandma’s portal far far away

Limited functionality. Pretty much just a photo sharing app. Would have liked to see a full remote function similar to the Roku app but it’s clear the Facebook developers rushed the release even though this would make inputting names and search terms much easier

Life Changing. My 88 year old mother in law calls Portal “her joy.” She refused any phone technology but the Portal has captured her heart. Now during quarantine it is even more valuable. Photos from family and video chats keep her in touch with loved ones around the world. Easy for her to use. Easy for family to support. Check in on her health and state of mind. Share family events live. All She has to do is push a button to answer calls. Photos show up with no effort on her part. It is a wonderful thing.

It’s almost like being with. Your loved one!. I bought a portal to have near my Mom, and Pops! This way I can see every day! My Mom is 93 and Pops is 98! What a joy to talk to them every single day! The only thing I wish her Portal had, was a way to attract headphones or a way to increase the volume Probably twice as loud! They both have very nice and functional hearing aids, but they are from the time that, nice things are saved for special occasions only! Because they live far up a mountain, someone that comes to visit, that is not company is a special event, so they wear their hearing aids! But this is not so for family! They are saved to wear to town for a doctor’s appointment! I do agree that hearing aids are important for a Doctor’s appointment, but they should be asking the doctor for his notes as well, because even with their hearing aids, they don’t always capture all that the doctors are saying! I apologize for going on to write so much about the importance of hearing well, but it is something that I battle with every day!

Sweet Memory. Nice memory reminder tool. I love the photo sharing option.

Making extra groups. I love the portal. I use it in a group video chat setting daily. My only issue is every time the “transfer to portal” option is used, it calls every person who had joined that “room” since it opened. It also creates 1, sometimes 2, new random messenger groups with all the members in it. It’s extremely annoying to have to leave 20+ groups a day. I report the issue but nothing has changed.

Pictures. Hard to delete single pictures

Great app. I love this portal for my father that’s a senior. The sound is great. The ease of use is spectacular. The app helps me upload pictures and make him see beautiful memories.

Portal is great, but…. The Portal has a better picture and more consistent audio than any tablet, computer or phone we have, making it nearly perfect for videoconferencing. If Meta builds in support for full Zoom functionality, provides a jack for earbuds or wired headphones, and maybe a usb - it would be perfect. Even without, it’s a great device.

Please update wake word. Love this portal for my 90 year old mom in assisted living but the wake word is hard for her. Please make it possible to change the wake word.

This has been a blessing to our family. We have a big family and recently lost our loving mother who was married to our dad for 70 years. I bought one of these for my dad and it’s been a life saver for him to communicate with the family as some of us live far away. He loves having the pictures on it also and I add different ones from time to time to entertain him.

Failed to upload multiple photos from photo albums. App is getting crash when you select multiple photos from photo albums on iPhone and send to Portal’s album. For Individual photo, it’s working.

Show More. I love my portal but wish it would go through all of the photos not just a select few.

Love memories. I sit watching tv, reading visiting and my eye goes by Portal with all the love memories I save with family and friends. Nothing loud but wonderful pictures changing and bringing me happiness

A life saver. The Portal has been a life saver as my family has been able to stay safely in contact with my Mom during the pandemic. We use it nearly every day and do a group chat once a week. And it’s been so easy to use. Keep adding features! I’d love a way to remotely see my mom’s app choices so I can help her set up the apps like Netflix and Zoom. Right now, I can’t help her remotely.

Can’t create album. When I press ‘Create Album’ I am brought to the next window to name it, I do so and click ‘Done’ and I just get taken back to the ‘Photos’ screen and no album is present. There’s no way for me to get my photos on the device outside of Facebook. I’ve tried reinstalling no avail. Using Latest iOS and iPhone 11.

Best technology ever!!!. My mom is 94, not only does this keep pictures for her, but we can call her and she can see us face to face. With Covid it has let her feel connected with family!

Part of my Heart. Since I haven’t seen this part of the family for so long, this is the next best thing.

Love the photo display. I love that I can display photos to my portal (a digital picture frame). Everyone that visits my home also enjoys seeing those that are most important in my life and sharing in the memories we’ve made together.

Best Ever. Grand Daughters call us twice weekly. Son in Washington DC - we visit weekly. Portal has a crystal clear picture and great sound. No delay in transmission of communication. PLUS we can add our photos as a slide show that we enjoy through the day. Wonderful tool. Love it. Harvey of Iowa.

If you have a Senior you need a Portal. I love so much about having a Portal at my parents home I can upload photos to it from anywhere and they can watch them scroll through, they can use it just as an Alexa and ask questions and family members can call in through messenger and video chat with them as well. Many more great features as well, but uploading pictures that scroll through keeps them up to date with kids, grands and great grands all of which helps with memory.

Like a memories wall. My husband and I Love this Portal, we have some very special memories on here, and it takes you back to those memories each day. The one thing that could be improved is to allow you to connect to people who are not on Facebook. But, we have managed to make it work by them sending pictures to me and I can save them To my camera roll and from there put them into the portal. Just wish there was another way.

Uploading photos from camera roll. Initially this worked fine but only 50 at a time. No way to go directly to the month or year, you have to scroll and scroll until you find the pics you want. All of a sudden it stop working. There is supposedly no picture limit but I am no longer able to add any more pictures. Tried deleting and reinstalling the app. Tried resetting my portal, tried creating a new album just in case there was a picture limit for albums. NONE of this worked. This was a gift so that I could keep in contact with my family. Very frustrated with this!

Keeps me close when far away!. My mom lives 4 hours away this is how we all stay close to her and we can check on her. I put photos on the portal so she gets to see us.

Needs WhatsApp login. As a companion for a device that has a WhatsApp only login, this app should also have one, to let users manually add photos to their Portal. It’s silly that FaceBook is required to add photos from one’s own phone. But the Portal is great! So I hope WhatsApp login can be added to this app.

Meta Portal app. This App shuts down as soon as I click on it. We loved using our portal to video chat with our grandbaby but can’t seem to do much of anything else with it. Meta needs to make this right! What a waste of money! It only worked right a couple months after we purchased it. 😡

Great product. I love this product. Thanks so much Mark Zuckerberg, for making this great product.

Needs “Drop in” feature. Great tool for the house for video calls to family and friends, Alexa built in also is a plus. Just needs a “drop in” option on the app so that you can view your home when away and not having to have someone there to answer. Alexa echo has this capability so I don’t see why this couldn’t be included in a future update.

Poor Performance. I’ve used this app to provide my elderly mother with family photos from our extended family. I successfully upload through the app, but the photos fail to appear on the portal. Why is this so hard for Facebook?

Something went wrong error - FIXED. Update 1: It was really annoying to not have the remote functionally work. Even though FB took long, they have fixed it. Had to uninstall and reinstall the app to get the remote functionally to work again. Old review: I can’t believe that a company the size of FB can provide an app half baked. When using the remote feature for my FB Portal TV I keep getting an error ‘something went wrong’. I have to dismiss it for every click. FB please fix this ASAP!!!

Portal is just amazing!. Best app ever to seamlessly upload pics and to have video chat with your loved ones. My grandmother is 82 and she is loving it ever since she got it

I wish I could give zero stars. Every time I try to use this app to choose photos, it kicks me out. Also, it doesn’t even matter which photos you choose because it continually displays the same random 20 photos anyway. I’ve selected hundreds of photos and I see the same ones over and over. This app and the portal itself are terrible.

Sharing to Portal doesn’t work. You can only update 30 photos at a time. Uploading directly from my iPhone Photo app or Google Photos app and sharing it to the portal app never works. It freezes when it’s uploading photos once I choose an album... even if it’s just one photo I’m trying to upload. (I’ve tried on multiple devices) The reason I’m trying to upload directly from my iPhone Photos app or Google Photos is because the Portal app takes forever to scroll through my photos even if I’m only going back a few months. If they can get this function fixed I will update my rating to a 4 or 5. Otherwise it’s way to tedious to upload photos.

My Portal stopped connecting only have black screen. Mine has been working just fine since Christmas 2018, I have the first version of Portal. After this update it disconnected from my account! It is online with my WiFi but when logging in Facebook says it cannot find my portal.

All I want is to be able to…. 1. Be able to move small PIP screen to a different corner, and… 2. Be able to control zoom and pan manually as an option. Otherwise this is a great product and with 150 up and down speeds it solid latency. Sound quality still needs a little improvement but very acceptable as is.

Something Went Wrong Error (Remote). [Update2] Updating to a 5 star rating - not only has the remote functionality been restored but also the errors went away! :) Thanks Portal team for fixing the issue as promised. [Update1] Contrary to the developer response, looks like the latest app update removed the remote functionality altogether from Portal app. It essentially makes the Portal TV useless until I’m able to fix / replace the physical remote which hasn’t been working for quite sometime now. [Original Review] I keep getting ‘something went wrong error’ for pretty much every click in the remote that’s embedded in the app. The pop up has to be manually dismissed by clicking ‘Ok’ before you can do another click on the remote. It is annoying to say the least. Happy to provide screenshots to help resolve the issue.

Perfect for elderly. My mom is currently living in an assisted living facility during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has very limited visitation opportunities. She has dementia and cannot operate a smart phone or tablet as the touch screens are confusing to her. With the portal device we can initiate video calls without her having touch the device. She just has to be cued to say “hey portal call.....”. It has been a blessing to her and has improved our awareness of her needs remotely. We just set it up facing her recliner. Great product.

Trouble sharing photo’s. I have 4 contacts chosen and they never get any!!! Frustrated.

Limited functionality. There is no iPad app. It would be nice if I could upload pictures to my parents portals directly, sharing an album with them and ask them to download the app and enable the shared album is a bit much. Also, it would be nice if I get a warning about uploading duplicate files. Since the upload limit is so low, its hard to remember if I’ve uploaded that picture or not.

Remote doesn’t work. I downloaded this app because the remote to my portal stopped working and this was my only option to be able to use my portal. The remote on the app doesn’t work either and since this has been discontinued it unfortunately means that my portal is a dud.

Can’t call my kitchen portal from app anymore. I used to be able to call my kitchen portal from my iPhone. However when I use the app and click on kitchen portal, it just goes to messenger if I wanted to message someone. A few weeks ago it use to work great. I used this as an in house intercom to talk to my other family members. Now this function doesn’t work. Please bring it back so I can call other portals in my house.

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Feedback. Love this. Would be far better if Portal could access Photos by year.

Portal app. Portal app is good , i love how i can call portal from my phone to see my kids at home while im at work

Do not advise for download. I do not advise. leaves much to be desired. Knowing the Facebook , I would not recommend using this system, since your private information will definitely be stolen, and Im not even talking about wiretapping of your own device.

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Whatsapp login. Very good, works well. Cannot login on Portal mobile app with Whatsapp only on the Portal. App asked for Fbook login 😡

Could be much better. Connection issues persist, even after updating. I have to restart the app in order to connect to my Portal TV. Missing keyboard functionality.

Facebook login only 👎. Needs WhatsApp support

the app SUCKS. I love the portal itself, but the app needs some major work. It’s glitchy, more often then not it multiplies the photos so there’s like 5 copies of 1 photo (before upload, just in the selection area). It doesn’t tell you what photos have already been uploaded so i end up uploading the same ones over and over because it only lets you upload 30 at a time so you have to go out and in and out and in. for a company worth billions you’d think they’d be able to have an operational app. you got work to do facebook!

Love my Portal. I ❤️ my Portal.

Fair enough. Good app. But hey, where the cast button went?

Amazing. Portal is amazing and easy to use. The sound especially, is excellent.

Love it. We love our Portal+. Now have got them for the whole family 😊

Poor design. No 3pty integration, poor UX, plug in the back keeps popping out, I bought a small lazy Susan to place it on, makes it a bit bearable!!

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Isn’t user friendly for the elderly. I brought the portal for my dad who is 84 and the portal is constantly losing WiFi and is difficult for my dad to use.

Nice product but …. Nice product but when append photos more three photos, photo slide work abnormally Please fix this error

Love it!!!!. I LOVE MY PORTAL!!!

Photo Upload Error?. I’m not sure what’s happening, but anytime I select photos from my camera roll to display on portal, only one or two ever shows up. I select 30, it says they uploaded, and then 28 or 29 will disappear. 🤔

App keeps crashing. Not able to open the portal app at all

Update: You CAN call your own Portal device again. Update: Developer response is correct that the bug was in Messenger. Updating the Messenger app did not fix the problem for me—I had to completely delete and redownload the app—but it works now! Thanks for the quick response! (I guess it wasn’t like “trying to call yourself with your own phone number” after all 🤔.) Old review: Yes, it SAYS you can [call your own device]. But when you hit the big “call” button on the app, it just opens the Messenger app [and nothing happens]. I tried chatting Portal support, and the person I talked just denied that it is even possible to call your own Portal. He told me (exact quote) “you can't call your account from the same account. The Portal works by using Facebook Messenger. So, that would be like trying to call yourself with your own phone number.” So I don’t know if he’s just an idiot, or whether Portal customer support people actually aren’t trained on the basic features of the device, or if the app is just glitchy and worthless. But either way, I can’t call my own Portal. So one star for the device, or the app, or the help.

Need more controls in app. Need full control in app so folks help help their elderly parents grandparents remotely who are not tech savvy. This is important FB!

Fails to connect to iPhone photos. When the app works it is great. Unfortunately it is too buggy and fails to connect to my iPhone Photos. I’ve tried it on several iPhones and it consistently fails to work. I resorted to putting some pictures onto a Samsung phone, downloading the app from the Google play store - and it seems to be able to upload those. It’s rather cumbersome workaround. Please can you fix asap.

Love it. I love the fact that I could take My video calls on my tv feel like were in back to the future move seen 👍🏼

Bad picture rotation. I love the portal, but I have 480 pictures on it and I feel like I see the same ones all the time. Is there anyway to t fox this?

Love my portal, but the iOS app needs some work. I love the portal for video calls, but the iOS app and the photo management system in general has some flaws. 1. They make it very cumbersome to add photos to your Portal from your Apple photos library. You can only upload 50 at a time, and you have to select each photo individually, which is a real pain if you want to add a lot of photos. I suspect that they neglect this feature because they want users to add photos to Facebook instead. 2. When you add photos to Portal from your Apple photos, it changes their order around, which makes it hard to find the spot where you left off. 3. It doesn’t successfully add all the photos you select. I tried to add two batches of 50 photos each. So there should be 100 photos on my portal, but only 82 of them made it over. And because the order is off, the only way to figure out which ones didn’t make it would be a real chore.

Horrible. This is the worst app ever

Glitchy. Not stable crashes. The app continues to crash when I try to use it. Won’t let me upload photos. Useless app to this point which makes the Portal device worthless. Very disappointing.

Can you please update. Update this app please, it's starting to not work on my iPhone Update: It's still not working what a waste

Constant crashes. Doesn’t open, just crashes immediately every time.

Requires many more features. Would be great to use app to initiate calls Cant make settings change through app Cant answer portal calls through app ........

Not user friendly. Not user friendly no place to get REAL support Lots of money spent NOT HAPPY!

Slow. This app loads so slowly and doesn’t run smoothly.

Fun. Still much to learn but lovin it so far

Can’t get in. I cannot log into any Facebook apps keep getting stupid error messages. Facebook app,this app , messenger app , 🤬

Memories. Portal is great to preserve family memories, happy moments and loving adventures!!!

It works very well.. But it would be great to be able to make calls to contacts form the portal app on the phone. Something like a remote ports I guess. Thank you!

Adding pictures is a nightmare. It doubles and triples the pictures in the album that you select from and jumps back to the top after you select 3 pictures. Scrolling from 2023 to 2017 to add 3 pictures is insanely time consuming. SUPER glitchy.

Super frame. I love that I can add new photos, EVERYDAY!

WhatsApp login. The PortalTV doesn’t require a facebook account to use the product. Why do I need a facebook account to use the App with my PortalTV? Surely you should add the functionality to login to the app via WhatsApp? I want to use the app on my PortalTV but my PortalTV isn’t linked to Facebook account.

Glitches in adding photos.. It would be way easier if you can pick by time line. Or years. I can’t access photos prior to 2018. It starts to glitch.

Add back the transfer to/fro phone app to portal!. It had the feature on roll-out. It needs to be added back! When moving from room to room, it’s impossible now to continue the call. Transfer to/fro portal is essential. How long must we wait for you to add it back?!

Won’t let me add photos. I have tried multiple times & Portal keeps telling me that I don’t have network connection but I do!!

Portal pictures. Love to see my loved ones!!

Adding photos. Too difficult please make it easier

App Crashes On Launch. App is current unusable as it crashes as soon as it is launched.

Portal is glitchy!. Portals app is extremely glitchy. Whenever uploading photos the app will eventually crash and close.

App crashes when adding new photos. Pls fix it

Portal. Why won't show my pictures Or time an date

Fun. Portal has been excellent but wish I could add more apps.

Enjoying. Love Portal don’t like what she picks up I say.

5 Monkeys Jumping on the bed. Want this story time title back on my Portal please‼️

Facebook Live to Groups. I was so excited to get my Portal last spring to enable our small company to use Facebook Live for our sales meetings. Much to my disappointment, it did not do that. The promise for this year has been, “we’re bringing FB Live to Portal”! Yes, now you can do Live — but only to all friends or selections of individuals. No groups. Please bring this functionality ASAP! It’s only half as functional without!

Crappy app. Remote never connects. Remote in app hardly ever connects to portal . May be 1 out of 20 tries. You cannot delete a portal after registering in app. Not sure how FB released it without performing even basic QA

No remote functionality?. There doesn’t appear to be any remote function (need to be able to mute while not sitting next to the device).

Portal. Love it!

Stopped casting. Photo casting during a call was the most important feature for my family… and now it’s gone. PM team, please reinstate this feature.

Something went wrong. Last update total broke to remote feature of APP and it always throws “something went wrong” error.

Mimaw. I am having problems with my portal it turns black and it does not show me photos, not even the time and stays black, thank you can you help me? Thank you.

viewing when not at home.. When I am away from home I can’t see if anyone is in my house. Am I able to connect something to it so I can see what is going on in my house

So buggy. This app is so buggy. I’ve been booted off a help chat twice and unable to solve a problem uploading photos. Unimpressed by yet another extension of Facebook.

So many disappointments. So few pleasures.. How can a company with massive resources produce such a mess. Example: No iPad version. Even one-person development shops will take advantage of the bigger, better tablet format. Not Facebook. Example: Crippled functions. You can’t change the wake word for the Portal. Why? The Alexa app can change it for old Echo devices. There’s more. But I’ll follow facebook’s example and only spend the minimum amount of time on this review — leaving the reader wishing for more.

What a pathetic app. Doesn’t start, portal device doesn’t update

App crashes. App crashes upon launching . Fix it soon , it’s an iPhone 12

Requires a FB/Instagram login. Why can’t I simply use this app to upload some pictures?